The depiction of blackness in the visual arts is located in the complex discourse of representation. Blackness within western visual art has been, and continues to be viewed as oppositional to representations of whiteness, and is constantly perceived as other. This dissertation analyses the process of othering and the impact of such a process on the production of artwork in southern Africa, where the representation of the black male, in particular has been subjected to racist ideology, supported by its props, stereotype, generalization and the homogenization of black experience. Using poststructuralist theories of identity construction and power, I analyse stereotype, racism and masculinity in the colonial and postcolonial periods, focussing especially on the internalization of white constructions of blackness within black visual culture. I discuss the work of Baines as representative of colonial constructions of black masculinity, the work of Bhengu, Mapplethorpe and Makhoba as illustrative of the internalization of stereotypic identities, and the work of Voyiya, Harris and Nyoni as representative of resistant discourses of representation of the black male body. I situate the latter within the contemporary debate on questions of subjectivity and agency within the Foucauldian concept of power. I have deliberately chosen works by two American artists (Mapplethorpe and Harris) in order to situate discourses of blackness within a wider context. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

The oeuvre of the Kalahari Studio (Cape Town), Drostdy Ware (a division of Grahamstown Pottery, Grahamstown) and Crescent Potteries (Krugersdorp) is investigated within the historical context of the 1950s, a watershed period that witnessed crucial developments in South African cultural and political history. This dissertation elucidates the historical development, key personnel, the ceramics, as well as relevant technical information related to the Kalahari Studio, Drostdy Ware and Crescent Potteries. This dissertation analyses the broader socio-political and ideological paradigms that framed South African art-making, as well as the international design trends that influenced the local studio ceramics sector. The establishment and demise of the South African studio ceramics industry and requests for tariff protection were considered within this context. Significant primary research was conducted into the present status of South African studio ceramics from the 1950s in the collections of our heritage institutions. Wares of all three of the studios reveal a predilection for figurative imagery, especially images of indigenous African women and iconography derived from reproductions of Southern San parietal art. Imagery of African women is considered within the framework of the native study genre in South African painting, sculpture and photography from 1800-1950 and Africana ceramics from 1910-1950. Images of San parietal art are investigated within their historical context of a growing public and academic interest in the Bushmen and a surge in publications containing reproductions of San parietal art. Some images of African women and San parietal art conform to pejorative and theoretically problematic modernist cannons of the'other', while some are subversive and undermine the dominant pictorial and ideological artistic conventions. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000.